Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.

I have been a customer with Bank of Internet since 2012 and until now it was a pleasure having them manage my money. I am a student who lives off of loans and grants and have had all of my education disbursements deposited into BOI since I opened the account. On June 18th I went out to dinner on my last dime and miscalculated the tip, accidently leaving $.60 more than I had in the account. About a week later I received an email informing me of the overdraft and asking me to deposit funds. I immediately initiated a transfer from my Amazon Payments account and the balance was back in the green two days later.

Last Saturday on the 15th of September I deposited my most recent check expecting it to clear by today, which it did, but then they sent an email stating that they were holding my funds for an extra week because of "repeated overdrafts." In fact, that $.60 was the only time I've ever over drafted.

Now, normally this would not be a big deal except I live in Colorado which was recently declared an emergency disaster zone due to the "100 year storm" and me and my family have have immense expenses to deal with, on top of educational supplies, food, etc.

I explained all of this to a call center worker and he agreed completely, saying "I know this sounds crazy but at this point there's nothing I can do." When I asked why a customer would want to stay with a bank that did this he said "Yeah, I agree." Even their own employees realize how absurd the company is acting.

Eventually I had to speak with a supervisor who was not the least bit interested in helping me. He explained that in order to treat customers "fairly" they "never" make exceptions to holds due to repeated overdrafts (even though the first person I talked to said they did sometimes make exceptions). So I asked whether the contract I signed with them specifies repeated overdrafts or whether a single overdraft gives them the right to hold funds and he said that the contract only says repeated but "repeated" refers to the number of days rather than the number of overdrafts. I'm not a lawyer so I don't know if this is something that has been established in the courts but he assured me that he had "8 years of banking experience" and I should trust him.

He also claimed that federal regulations forced them to implement this policy, but when I pointed out that other banks exist that don't follow this policy he backtracked and reiterated that they can't make exceptions. I recorded both phone calls and I can make them available publicly after I remove personal information.

When I asked for the logic behind holding funds because of a tiny overdraft he claimed that by overdrafting even a tiny amount I was "defrauding" the bank...yeah, fraud, not just a tip miscalculation.

An hour later I have no resolution to this and no means to purchase my basic living expenses. My next steps are to file complaints with every official body I can think of and to get the word out there about my horrible experience with a bank that claims to value their customers. Laughable.

Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.

AUTHOR: Sebastian - ()

SUBMITTED: Wednesday, September 18, 2013

POSTED: Wednesday, September 18, 2013

After posting my report yesterday I had resigned myself to the idea that I had no recourse to get access to my funds. Much to my surprise, today I received a very sincere and apologetic phone call from Casey at Bank of Internet. He made no excuses and did not try to give me a corporate boilerplate explanation of what happened. He basically just took full responsibility, contacted the bank that issued my original check to verify the funds, and I had the full amount by 5PM. Additionally, he provided his direct contact details and offered to personally assist me if I have any problems in the future.

He did not mention ripoffreport and he understood my case very well so I don't think that this report is what caused them to fix the problem, I think this went up the ladder and they quickly realized the mistake.

Let me say that one of the main reasons I signed up with BOI in the first place was their reputation for customer service, which has always been stellar except for this event, and I'm very happy that they resolved the situation in under a day and to my complete satisfaction. I'm glad I can put this mess behind me and considering how quickly they responded I have no plans to close my account and I would still recommend them in the future.

TL:DR: BOI fixed the problem in under a day and took full responsibility for their actions without making excuses. Thank you!

AUTHOR: Sebastian - ()

SUBMITTED: Tuesday, September 17, 2013

POSTED: Tuesday, September 17, 2013

I have looked into the legality of their actions and unfortunately they are in the right. According to the Expedited Funds Availability Act they have the right to place a hold on any deposits to an account that was overdrawn for more than 6 days, even if it was only 60 cents. Once again a failure of our consumer protection laws though I still hold BOI to be reponsibile because while they are allowed to hold my deposit doesn't mean they have to.

Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.